“I’ve done everything I needed to, and more than I hoped.”
“Oh, that’s not cryptic at all.”
Morrie sighed. “I was hoping to tell you about it once I’d cracked the entire puzzle. But since you insist, I found out something. About Dracula.”
“What? How?”
The ice in Morrie’s eyes was hard as flint. Unease flickered in my gut. Whatever Morrie discovered had turned him serious, which I knew from experience was never a good sign. “I wrote an algorithm last night to search through news sites across the world. It identifies specific parameters – namely, the types of crimes that a vampire might commit. Blood-lettings, beheadings, that sort of thing. Then it verifies the stories across multiple sources and creates a map of space and time that might tell us something about his movements.”
“That sounds like a pretty complex algorithm to write in a single evening.”
“Well, it was my creation,” Morrie smiled. He could never ever miss an opportunity to show off. “Besides, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands lately. The only thing I haven’t had nearly enough of is your body, which is a shame, because I think another orgasm or ten might do you good, eliminate all this suspicion and negativity.”
“If I want to eliminate negativity, I’ll go to Sylvia’s shop for some banishing incense. What did this algorithm tell you?”
“Look for yourself.” Morrie handed me his phone.
I swiped across the screen, viewing a complex timeline of events. The trail started over a year ago, around the time Heathcliff first appeared at the shop. There was a single newspaper clipping from the Argleton Gazette, reporting a Barchester arboretum was broken into. The thieves made off with three large cartons containing rare orchids from the Carpathian mountains encased in their natural soil.
“I remember this from the novel. Dracula was trying to move from Transylvania to England, in order to find new blood and spread his curse. To regenerate his powers, he transported fifty boxes of Transylvanian earth.” My hands trembled as I swiped to the next entry in Morrie’s program. “If he found himself already here in England, alll he needs is the dirt from his homeland to regain his strength and regenerative powers.”
“Precisely why he stole only three specimens, all brought from Romania,” Morrie said. “He’s starting small.”
After a few months of no activity, the timeline expanded rapidly, with locations popping up all over the map. More articles revealed thefts from private gardens, rare plant displays, anywhere with plants transported from Romania. No one seemed to have connected the crimes, and there were few clues and no arrests. ‘It’s as if the burglars flew over the fence, like a bird or a bat,’ one reporter said.
But the burglaries weren’t what made me gasp. Notices of strange deaths, missing people, bodies found in the woods, blood smeared on the door of a church. When looked at individually, it was all business as usual given Britain’s high crime rate. But put together like this and connected with the dirt burglaries…
It’s him. Count Dracula. He’s repeating the story from his novel. Which means that as soon as he’s powerful enough… he won’t stop until the rivers run red with innocent blood.
“What are these dotted lines?” I asked, pointing to the map.
“Those connect real estate sales in the areas where the dirt was stolen. I figured that if Dracula is following the plan from his book, he’ll be acquiring property in England to house his graves. I’ve been tracing property sales in the areas around where the deaths and burglaries are happening, but so far I haven’t found a convincing pattern that will point conclusively to any particular addresses. It would help if I knew whether his tastes ran to Victorian semi-detached or modernist apartments.”
I threw my arms around Morrie’s neck. “This is genius. You’ve done half the work, Morrie. With this map, we can trace Dracula’s movements. It looks as if he’s moving through the Midlands and up the country. It will only take a bit of sleuthing to figure out which properties he’s purchasing. If I remember rightly from the book, to destroy him we simply have to find all his graves and destroy them. Then, if we injure him he won’t be able to heal.”
“I am a genius.” Morrie leaned in for a kiss. “Why don’t you show me just how clever you think I am?”
I kissed him, because he was indeed very clever, and also because there was the tiniest hint of vulnerability in his voice. Morrie tasted like… like deception and desperation. I pushed down my doubts and lost myself in his lips, his fingers trailing across my cheek, his other hand brushing over my nipple…
“Stop canoodling and get me out of here.” Heathcliff barreled through us, tearing my lips from Morrie’s. He stalked down the street toward the green. Morrie and I scrambled to our feet and rushed after him.
I jogged alongside him as he stalked across the green, heading to Butcher Street like his life depended on it. “How’d it go?”
“That woman is a weapon of mass destruction,” Heathcliff said. He reached up and rubbed a stain on his collar.
“Is that… lipstick?” I said.
“You told me to be convincing,” he growled. “I couldn’t exactly tell her to get off me.”
Did I want to know what happened in there? My mind flashed back to Danny and Amanda in the closet at Nevermore. Nope, I definitely don’t want to know.
“So, did you find out anything?”
“I’ve confirmed what we already knew. Brian was deep in debt. Danny was taking him to court to get his rights reverted on his books so he could self-publish them. If Danny won, Brian would be ruined. It sounds as if Danny’s announcement about his memoirs was the icing on the cake.” Heathcliff rubbed at another lipstick stain on his cuff. “What’s more, Amanda was helping Danny with his case, by giving him documents showing Brian hadn’t been paying all his royalties. Apparently Amanda was convinced Danny was going to leave Penny so the two of them could run off together. She was showing off a diamond necklace Danny gave her.”
“Wow. Anything else?”
“Yes. Amanda does a bit of admin work for her husband at the publishing house. She said that the woman, Beverly, contacted her a few days ago, pretending to be a literary agent scouting for new talent. She asked lots of questions about Danny’s schedule. Amanda sent her a free ticket to the event and the draft of Danny’s memoir she found on Brian’s hard drive. I think she was trying to stir up trouble.”
“Interesting. Beverly said she’d seen the posters of the event around town and purchased the ticket herself,” Morrie said.
“Exactly.” Heathcliff glowered. “So if she’s so innocent, why did she lie?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Why didn’t you tell me Amanda gave you a free ticket?” I asked.
Beverly paced the length of her cell, wringing her hands. “Because I thought it would make me look more guilty, okay? Like I’d been stalking Danny for weeks, waiting for the perfect chance to strike.”
“And were you?”
She nodded grimly. “Ever since his new book came out. I can’t explain it – it made me crazy. Seeing him on TV or Youtube videos talking about it, reading passages about garroting, taking gleeful pleasure in what he put his character through. All I wanted to do was write to the venues and request they cancel the events. I know it’s bloody pointless, but the media already made it clear they’re not interested and I had to try something. It was her who encouraged me to go along and stir up a fuss.”
“Amanda? How come?”
“How should I know?” Beverly shrugged. “She said she’d give me the ticket and Danny’s manuscript if I went and said my piece and made sure everyone was looking. As if I’d want to read a memoir that was full of lifes! I deleted the file right away.”
“But you decided to go to the event?”
Beverly nodded. “Amanda said if I should yell at anyone, it should be her husband the publisher – he was the one who put the book out. She even said I should say that to the TV cameras if I saw any. Well, I hardly got the chance
before your lug of a colleague kicked me out, but I had a right go at him outside. That’s all I can tell you. Now, get out of here. They’re about to serve breakfast and I don’t want to eat the medieval gruel that passes for food in here in front of you.”
As soon as I walked through the door to the flat, Jo thrust a wine glass into my hand. “Wow, it’s as if you have magical mind-reading powers,” I smiled as I took a sip. After the day I had, I needed wine in an IV.
“I’ve got to try and make up for the biblical plague,” Jo smiled back. “And I’ve made Bolognese, too.”
A delicious tomatoey, garlicky smell wafted from the kitchen. “You’re forgiven.”
I slid into the table while Jo bustled around, piling generous servings of pasta and Bolognese sauce onto plates and setting out garlic bread and parmesan. “What did you get up to today?”
I shrugged. “Oh, you know… the usual.”
“Shelving books, sticking your nose in police business, shagging your hot boyfriends, that kind of thing?”
“Exactly. Boring stuff, unlike your day. You did the autopsy on Danny Sledge,” I said nonchalantly. “Find anything interesting?”
“Mina Wilde, you’re not using me to get confidential information on a murder victim in order to further your own ends.”
I smiled sweetly. “I’m just chatting with my flatmate about her day, trying to show an interest in her work.”
“Sure.” Sarcasm dripped from Jo’s voice. She set down her wine glass and steepled her fingers. “However, I’m a sucker, because I’m dying to talk to someone about it.”
I sprinkled a generous handful of parmesan over my Bolognese and dug in. It tasted even more delicious than it smelled. “Go on, spill.”
“Well, as you know, Danny was garroted. The evidence on the body suggested that someone snuck up behind him and wrapped the piece of material around his throat. But he didn’t die from asphyxiation as I’d first thought. The killer used the murder weapon to lift Danny off his feet, and the pressure was enough to sever his carotid artery. He died from bleeding internally.”
I shuddered. “That sounds brutal.”
“It is. The person who did it would have to be relatively strong. We don’t like to make assumptions these days, but it’s most likely we’re looking at a male assailant.”
“So Mrs. Ingram is free, then?”
Jo shook her head. “The scarf you found was the murder weapon, all right. Numerous witnesses claimed to have seen that scarf around Beverly’s neck at the reading the night before, including me. And it also happened to be the same scarf used to kill Beverly’s daughter all those years ago. I found traces of Abigail’s blood that match her file, and the description of the scarf is the same – it was leopard-print.”
“What did Beverly say to that?” I can’t believe she didn’t mention this to me.
“She said she had no idea where that scarf came from. She admitted she wore a leopard-print scarf, but it wasn’t her daughter’s. As far as she knew, the police still had that. She said she purchased hers from the charity store a week ago, in the hope it would make Danny remember.”
“But that can’t be true. Was there a mix-up somehow? How else would the scarf have got out?”
“Nope. According to their records, Beverly checked that scarf out along with some of Abigail’s other belongings fifteen years ago.”
Shit. This was sounding worse and worse. “And there’s no way to prove the murder weapon was the same scarf Beverly wore that night.”
“She says she threw it at Brian Letterman at the party. When Hayes questioned him, he said that it dropped on the ground and he didn’t pick it up. We’ve got officers emptying rubbish bins in case some well-meaning citizen tossed it out, but more likely than not it’s lost forever, or…”
I finished. “…or, Beverly Ingram is lying, and she went back early that morning with Abigail’s scarf and killed Danny Sledge.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I just don’t believe it,” I said.
In what felt like a way too common occurrence, the four of us were slumped around the empty bookshop, discussing a murder. I sat behind the desk, a ledger open in front of me as if the very presence of our dwindling accounts might somehow miraculously will a customer to show up. Morrie perched on the edge of the velvet chair, his body trembling with nervous energy. Heathcliff paced between the shelves, unsure of what to do with himself now that I’d all but usurped his chair. Quoth perched on the chandelier, chewing on a stash of cranberries he’d secreted away up there.
“What’s not to believe?” Heathcliff grumbled. “She killed the guy with her daughter’s scarf in revenge for her murder.”
“But if you’re going to kill someone, why show off the murder weapon to a hundred people the night before? And besides, Beverly knows Danny couldn’t have done it. He was in a jail cell at the time.”
“Then she did it because he wrote The Somerset Strangler,” Morrie piped up. “She said so herself – Danny got rich off Abigail’s death, and Beverly couldn’t abide it.”
“How could he get rich off that guff?” Heathcliff picked up a copy of Danny’s book and slammed it down on the counter. “Its ineptitudes are so many in number that to account for them would produce a tome more than double its size. And I only read the first page. How anyone could finish the thing is a mystery to me.”
But he said he liked it the other day, I remembered. Heathcliff was trying to pick a fight with Morrie.
“Actually, I read it on the train down to London.” Morrie held up his phone. “It’s good, though brutal as hell. It won’t help us much because in it the coroner was the murderer, and we know Jo’s no killer. I was looking forward to discussing it with you all but it appears no one else is as dedicated to solving this murder as I am.”
“You read that on your phone?” Heathcliff glowered, his hands balled into fists.
“Yeah, I did.” Morrie rose to his feet and waved the phone in Heathcliff’s face. “I made the text nice and large, held it in one hand, and scrolled with my finger while sipping my espresso in the other.”
Okay, now I was picking up on the sexual tension. Heathcliff’s nostrils flared and his shoulders tensed as he stared down Morrie, who met his simmering rage with his signature smirk. As the two of them faced off against each other, the whole room sizzled, like the air between them might burst into flames at any moment.
I leaned forward, my heart leaping into my chest even as heat pooled in my belly. I should break them up before Heathcliff punches Morrie.
But I didn’t move.
“You didn’t buy a copy from the bookshop,” Heathcliff boomed. “The bookshop that’s housed you and your criminal activities when you had nowhere else to go. The bookshop that you could save in a heartbeat just by writing a cheque but are too selfish to do so. No, instead you betray us all by purchasing from The-Store-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named and then come back here to rub it in my face—”
“At least you’re not over-dramatic about it.” Morrie patted his shoulder. “I read a book. It’s not a crime. Calm down, mate. Don’t burst a blood vessel.”
Heathcliff’s already dark skin burned a deeper shade. I thought I could see steam coming out of his ears.
Shouldn’t you be breaking this up? Quoth asked inside my head.
Not this time.
“You don’t take anything seriously,” Heathcliff growled, this time. “Everything is a bloody joke to you. I know you don’t give a fuck about me or Quoth, but this is Mina’s life and it’s about to be taken away from her and you don’t care—”
“I do care. I just don’t see how moping and raging will actually fix things. Your problem is that you’re too serious.” Morrie grinned. “Lighten up, mate. Have some fun. Here, I’ll show you.”
And he leaned forward and kissed Heathcliff square on the lips.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Croak?” Quoth quipped, transfixed by the sight of them.
I froze, my bo
dy locked in a rage of lust as Morrie’s lips teased Heathcliff with a featherlight touch. Heathcliff’s eyes narrowed, and he raised his fist. I forced myself from my chair, thinking that he was going to punch Morrie.
Instead, he wrapped his huge hand around the back of Morrie’s head and pushed his face hard against his. Their tongues twined together, their mouths smashing together in a hot, violent, punishing kiss.
Well, well, well, Quoth said.
You don’t sound surprised, I thought.
Oh, I’ve seen it for a long time. Honestly, I thought it would happen much sooner. You okay with it?
Better than okay. An ache rose between my legs as I watched those two powerful men fight their battle with tongues and lips, laying bare something that had gone unspoken for so long.
With a gasp, Heathcliff broke free of whatever spell Morrie had him under. He planted his hands on Morrie’s shoulders and shoved him. Hard.
Morrie sailed across the room and slammed into the Classical Studies shelves. He crashed to the floor, and a cascade of hardcover volumes poured over him. He winced as Thucydides smashed into the side of his face.
“Get out,” Heathcliff growled, pointing to the door.
“But—”
“I said, get out. I don’t want to see your fucking face right now.”
“Heathcliff—” I reached for him, but he yanked his arm away.
“Don’t anyone fucking touch me,” he yelled, storming upstairs.
My chest tightened. I rushed to Morrie’s side, but he was already scrambling to his feet, shoving the books aside as he fled for the hallway. His face was bone white. “I… I’d better go.”
“Wait, we should talk about this.” I glanced up at the staircase, but Heathcliff had already disappeared. “I’m sure when Heathcliff calms down he’ll realize—”
“No,” Morrie said. “I can’t be here with him. Not now. I have to—”
The front door slammed on its hinges. “Hello, pitiful humans. Did you miss me?”
Memoirs of a Garroter (Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries Book 4) Page 16